Review of "The Prefect" by Alastair Reynolds

Alastair Reynolds has been quoted as saying the only good sci-fi is sci-fi that is “fictionally interesting”.  Not a politician’s statement, the author was aiming at putting value on the entertainment side of the genre—big concept, big story sci-fi as it were.  And his work shows every indication of walking the talk.  Pedestrian prose that assumes nothing of the reader, plot holes ignored in favor of plot twists, and theme taking a backseat to action, Reynolds excels at producing the tropes of Golden Era sci-fi: flashy space battles, cool tech, and fast-paced stories that grab you and go.  His 2007 The Prefect is no exception.

Returning to Revelation Space after a four year hiatus, The Prefect is the story of Detective Tom Dreyfus and his fight to keep the Glitter Band in the hands of existing powers.  Defining ‘fragmented society’, the Glitter Band is a 10,000 strong collection of inhabited space modules orbiting a sun.  Each module having its own population, culture, and laws, they nevertheless adhere to a universal voting system, a system which Dreyfus’ prefecture is responsible for protecting the integrity of.  When a fraudulent voting scam coincides with a gruesome piece of sabotage that destroys one of the modules, Dreyfus and his team, Prefects Ng and Sparver, head out to solve the mystery and put an end to the voting issue.  It isn’t long, however, before they themselves are calling for a vote from the citizenry of the Band.  The choice whether or not to allow the Prefects to use weapons, the threat is more than the collective might of the modules may be able to handle.

Review of "Pushing Ice" by Alastair Reynolds

Imagine a person, their heart set on a steak.  They go to the shop, buy a hunk of meat and throw it on the grill.  But just as the juices start sizzling, they decide they’re rather have a salad.  It’s a sunny day, why not something light.  But in the middle of cutting the lettuce, the sudden desire for tomato soup hits them, and out comes the big pot and garlic—no wait, dessert first…  And so on.  You now have the basic plot structure of Alastair Reynold’s 2005 Pushing Ice.  The ideas half-baked, a meal is never served.  Exposition on near-future tech, character feuds, cryogenics, FTL, a murder mystery, time shifts—each follow one on top of another but never congeal into a larger purpose.  What happened to plot?  What was my goal? Inter-character conflict or First Contact?  I’ve waded in so deep I  forget...  Oh well, I’ll just throw in some watermelon seeds with a space chase and see what happens…

I want to like Reynolds, I really do.  Similar to David Brin, Greg Egan, and Greg Bear, he’s an idea guy, and I like idea guys.  However, like Vernor Vinge he doesn’t have that natural touch of a writer or storyteller.  Chasm City and The Prefect hopefully not sucking Reynolds dry of talent, most of his works lack an adhesive, a glue—that writer-ly something—that ties a story together and gives it substance and impact.  But enough horseplay: what went wrong in Pushing Ice?

The book starts on firm footing.  It’s near future and mankind has developed the tech to reach and mine comets.  The ship Grasshopper has locked down another for drilling and blasting, when they receive a call from headquarters telling them that one of Saturn’s moons has come out of orbit and is now headed across our universe, pieces of ice sloughing off to expose a Death Star-esque superstructure beneath.  In amazingly ho-hum fashion, the Grasshopper, led by Captain Bella Lind, sets off in pursuit.  Ahh, space chase you say; I know what that is.  When Chief Engineer Svetlana finds suspicious data regarding the speed of Saturn’s “moon” and is rebutted reporting it to Captain Lind, you say: “I know that, too!  That’s called: character conflict!”  Unfortunately, from this point onward all sense of familiarity is lost—and not in a good way.  

Irregular and unnatural, the number of sub-plots and storylines Reynolds chooses to slap onto Pushing Ice amounts to a plate of spaghetti with ice cream and frogs legs.  Cryogenics, first contact, nano-forging, big dumb objects, alien linguistics, and other major sci-fi tropes take their turns, randomly occupying center stage.  If any of these devices were interwoven into plot or characterization to build toward a larger goal, then all would be understandable.  But that they work alone, discarded as necessary, leaves character and dialogue as disposable and wooden as can be.  Little coheres into an umbrella concept, the overall integrity of the novel suffering, as such.

For example, Reynolds fills multiple pages with characters figuring out the dials and buttons on a foreign space suit.  Is this knowledge later used for any of the characters’ benefit? No.  To spring a plot twist?  No.  Is it original, a space suit like no other writer of sci-fi has ever imagined?  No.  (It speaks English.)  Why then go into the detail?  As a result of this and many other useless digressions, the book is bloated with empty text that points to the fact the novel has no single driving purpose.  Is it a character examination?  A plot driven story?  A thought experiment on first contact?  Sadly, it is none.  

And the writing, well, let me be brief and give an example of how telling is so much worse than showing.  This is an actual sample from Pushing Ice:

            Bella thought about that for a few paces. “How long do you think that had been up there?”

            “How should I know?”

            “I was asking for your opinion, that’s all.”

            Christine’s defenses cracked.  She let out a quiet sigh, as if she had decided to finally stop being obstructive and there was a kind of relief in that.

That, my friends, is immature style; thanks for directly telling us the temper of Christine’s thoughts and working a major emotional change into a few words.  Suffice to say, good writers are more subtle.

A question remains: if dialogue and behavior cannot be counted on to portray character personality, what can?  Pop-culture references, of course.  T-shirt slogans and music files (all pre-21st century—a strange coincidence) are a device Reynolds uses to inform readers of his characters’ traits.  “I’ve got one nerve left and your standing on it.” is the slogan printed on Bella’s t-shirt at one point in the book.  On top of being extremely anachronistic (I mean, really; couldn’t Reynolds have had a touch more imagination to fill the media gap between now and the time the novel is set?  Take a look at Stand on Zanzibar or Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology if you want to see a writer imaginatively examining the possibilities for future entertainment.), the reader’s intelligence is insulted.  Surely there must be better tricks to impart knowledge of a character.  And I won’t even go into the obvious politically-correct casting of blacks, Asians, and whites from various European backgrounds;  at times it’s like a Wal-mart ad for home appliances. 

I don’t normally write reviews so wild in tone, but I simply don’t know how else to address Pushing Ice.  It was an extreme struggle to finish.  Nothing congealed.  The characters did not behave like normal humans.  The sci-fi tropes—aliens, big dumb objects, futuristic tech, etc.—all were dealt with in ho-hum fashion.  “Hey Joe, the first aliens humanity has ever encountered are approaching.”  “Oh yeah, I think I’ll go get some breakfast.”  There are many other sci-fi writers that have gone in-depth into these tropes in far more interesting detail.  Read an Arthur C. Clarke novel and you’ll find the same cardboard engineer characters, but at least you are grabbed by an idea that is unwrapped for all of its potential with an interesting plot.  Pushing Ice, on the other hand, contains numerous half-baked ideas and tense moments that never add up to anything.  There are also cheap plot tricks (super-secret secrets teasing readers), but are disappointments when revealed.  The scope is set epic, but the novel feels more like a cracker barrel mix of whatever sci-fi trope happened to cross Reynold’s mind at the moment.  Everything that makes a novel good suffers for it, the meal never served.

Review of "Galactic North" by Alastair Reynolds

The front cover of Alastair Reynolds 2006 Galactic North boldly declares the author to be “A master singer of the space opera.”  Cracking it open and discovering ships battling in the black of space, futuristic technology and weaponry, and intercultural politics and prejudices progressing in good and evil fashion, the book does indeed seem to personify the sub-genre.  Galactic North is a collection of short stories, many of which fill gaps in the Revelation Space mythos.  Like many short story collections, however, quality is uneven.  Also, despite that several of the stories do stand alone, the collection is best appreciated with a familiarity of Reynold’s created universe.

“Great Wall of Mars” – Revealing the origins of a certain story in Revelation Space, Clavain’s diplomatic mission to Mars does not turn out as planned.  Metallic versions of Herbert’s sandworms, terraforming, and brotherly enmity appear to disjoint his hopes.  For those who haven’t read the RS series, the story reads in forced fashion, one event clamoring over another just to fill gaps.

“Glacial” – Another Revelation Space story, this one, however, can stand alone.  Unfortunately, it’s legs are weak.  Clavain and crew encounter an abandoned base on one of Jupiter’s moons where all the personnel are murdered, except one.  In explaining why only one survived, Reynolds attempts to build a profound morale dilemma.  But by resolving it simplistically - in consequentialist (pragmatist) vs. inconsequentialist (relativist) fashion - expect not to be enlightened.

“A Spy in Europa” – Perhaps the weakest in the collection, this story could have been lifted from the pulp magazines of the 50s and 60s with none the wiser.  Part undercover ops, part alien thriller, none of the plot milestones develop realistically.  Clashing with the previous story’s moralizing, death in this story takes on no meaning.  Magazine pulp, no more, no less.

“Weather” – Moving from the worst to perhaps the best of the collection, this story sees Reynolds finding form.  The characters act like real people, the conflicts are human – or at least as human as they can be with a Conjoiner involved – and theme is well developed.  The story has impact and proves that sci-fi is one of the best genres for discussions on cultural prejudice.  Though set in Revelation Space, this story works independently and can be enjoyed as such.

“Dilation Sleep” – A non-Revelation Space story (and one of the first Reynolds ever had published), this and the previous story vie for best of the collection.  “Dilation Sleep” tells of a man woken from cryogenic sleep and the weird, dreamlike experience that results.  Featuring great descriptions of biotechnology in a human environment, this story is highly reminiscent of Dick and Gibson.

“Grafenwalder’s Bestiary” – As the title implies, the main character is a creature collector, the more exotic the better.  A commentary on animal rights and respecting the rights of all living things, Reynolds leaves nothing to the imagination, literally and figuratively, in driving home his point.  (Not directly a Revelation Space story.)

“Nightingale” - The story’s name is derived from the hospital ship a handpicked crew of ex-soldiers are contracted to extract a wanted man from.  Weirder things happening with each step deeper into the abandoned ship, the slosh of cloned organs and tissue samples they encounter along the way are peanuts compared to what awaits them in the last room.  Highly reminiscent of Neal Asher’s works, this story can be read independently.

“Galactic North” – Abandoning the linear, straightforward style used to this point, the eponymous story attempts to create a time-lapsed mythology of Irravel and Markarian, as well as establish the origins of Remontoire.  Unable to be enjoyed without a knowledge of Revelation Space, this story is uneven and feels like filler otherwise.

Reynolds’ weaknesses continue to play themselves out in Galactic North.  Problems include: overhanded moralizing, readers being lead by the hand through the plot one baby step at a time, dialogue serving plot only, moral buttons being fat and obvious (sadism, justifiable revenge, irrevocably evil bad guys, etc.), plot developments being telegraphed, and political alliances that are black or white.  However, like a tech-ier version of Star Wars, there are some great pieces of imagination tucked away in this collection, as well as in Revelation Space as a whole.  Reynolds’ literary aspirations may not climb high, but he certainly delivers when it comes to pulp storytelling, wonderful gadgetry, and the possibilities of space and technology.  Further commendation should be given him for his inclusion of environmental, social, biological, and other scientific issues as background elements.  Fans of Peter Hamilton, Richard Morgan, Iain M. Banks, and Neal Asher will absolutely enjoy Reynolds’ work, but I would recommend Galactic North only to those up to speed on their Revelation Space storylines.